25

Alloy

3 weeks and 6 days until the trial. Visitors have already started to arrive, not many, but a few very curious people with nothing better to do, I guess.

Or they are hostiles sneaking in before the attack. No way to prove that, and it's paranoid level thinking, but it's also probable.

Nevermind.

24.0%

That would be a good sign, that I recovered and have almost a quarter of my original Aura reserves, but there is a reason it's like that. Aura comes from 'dark and light', and my encounter with Tyrian has pulled put more of my 'dark' into focus.

I'm a scoiciopath. Psychopath. Whatever word you want to use.

Qrow is with me, as a bodyguard or something incase something goes wrong. Ashley is already at the airfield, we are doing a test.

"I'm sure it's not that bad," he says as I try to explain what is wrong with me. "You care about us, don't you?"

"Yeeesss... but that's an exception. My empathy is... well it's crippled." I frown. "You saw how I fought?"

There was a recent Red Fang attack, nothing major, but it's worrying. It was too small, too uncoordinated, like the people in it were lashing out from doing nothing for too long. Adam is building up to something big, probably the trial, but his people aren't soldiers and are chaffing under the 'sit and wait' order.

I did... Well. I think. I didn't fight much, but when I did, I handled myself.

Which is the problem I am now pointing out to Qrow.

A video call with James confirms it, he saw me fight, properly fight, on the Amberheart during Vytal.

Excessive brutality might be okay against Grimm, but dismembering people is a whole other story.

And I felt nothing but a small satisfaction of a job well done, a threat removed.

I'm a hardened killer. I was one before I arrived here, before I even ever killed someone.

"Yeah." He sighs.

Not far now, but we are taking our time.

"Do you know why?" Qrow asks.

Hm. Why is he asking? Doesn't matter.

"Yes." I state. "The gap between the ideas 'Nobody should suffer like I have.' and 'I'll make then suffer like I have.' is a lot smaller than it should be." Step by step, closer to the airfield. "I try to stay on the good side, but it's work. Constant work."

It's why I don't blame Adam. Why I understand him.

I've been through an uncompromising decade or so of abuse, it's almost easy to pass that on, one way or another.

I just don't see people as people. I'm not a person, after all, so why should they be? Why shouldn't I hurt them to make myself feel better after what they did?

A broken mess of a person pretending to be a hero.

"I got like that once." Qrow admits. "Not constant, but there was a time when... Well..."

"How did you get through?" I ask. "Ruby and Yang? Tai?" Summer?

"Rae, actually." He snorts.

"Not possible. The bandit queen preaching forgiveness?" I half tease.

"Well, she didn't put it like that." He smirks. "More like 'you're going to stay miserable, doing shit like that. Push away the people who care about you, and then you'll get sloppy and rush to get a fix, only to have your latest victim pull a knife on you.'"

"That sounds almost like she's worried about what will happen to you." I smirk.

It's good advice, in a few ways. Rational, emotive, almost guilty trippy with the 'push away' aspect.

"Almost. Then she put a bottle down in front of me."

I crack up. "As if that's much better!"

"Hey, she's not the most people of people." We arrive at the airfield. "Now, what's this secret project of yours?"

"One of. Though this one is..." Well...

I'm not too sure about Remnant's morality. I probably should have talked to Qrow as a 'moral advisor' again. Still, he said it was... grey when I brought it up.

I shake my head and we head inside, passing the security checks. This is an Atlas facility, a small prototype aircraft base.

I walk through the doors to the waiting room. "Ashley, how are you today?"

"Alloy, and 5 o'clock." She smiles.

Qrow scratches his stubble in response.

"So, what are we doing today? More tests?" She's sounds tired.

"Yes. Of sorts. Come on, might as well get started."

The doors open revealing the aircraft.

"Tada." I deadpan.

I gesture towards the heavily modified manta. Dustless, of course. Though, it will need to be for what I have planned for it, no interference thank you, would hate for the engines to explode.

Ashley frowns. "Alloy... You know I can't fly anymore. It's not just Atlas, but... I can't." She turns to me. "I appreciate the gesture, but... Why are you smiling?"

"Miss Wood, tell me, what have you been practising the past few weeks?" I'm going to draw this out until she gets it.

"Aura manipulation. You called it a Paradigm Shift."

"And the tests we have been doing?"

"How Aura interacts with mush... rooms..." Her head snaps back to the aircraft.

"Oh my gods. You didn't."

"Of course I did."

"Uh, mind filling me in?" I roll my eyes at Qrow.

"I've got a theory, one that states all semblances are actually part of a larger 'possibility pool', and that what people call a Semblance is actually a shortcut they are given-slash-develop to a partially random part of that 'possibility pool'. Take, for example, Vine's Semblance and compare it to the Aura Manipulation Paradigm Shift I developed. He got it almost natively, but I put the work in to get an almost exact result."

Well, Vine's is much stronger, easier and cheaper, though he lacks the sheer detail my Paradigm Shift can do. I don't see him forming blades, though to be fair I can't either. Takes practice and skill.

"For the more exotic features, I put that to the Semblance pool overlapping with something I'm calling an M-Field." Magic. Fucking magic.

"So, knowing that, what is Jax's Semblance?" He is behind bars now. The world moves on when I'm not there to manage it.

Qrow's eyes widen. "You didn't."

I shrug. "It's not nearly as powerful, in fact the 'domineer' needs to have an orders of magnitude stronger Aura to get anything like the same effect. On top of that, we are using a cooperative variant for morality and effectiveness purposes."

"Is this another thing I should pretend I didn't hear?" Ashley asks.

"Yeah, forget that." I admit. "Anyway... To simplify, this ship has a mycelial network grown into it in place of a lot of it's control systems. An organic nervous system, if you will. And, once Ashley hops in and unlocks it's Aura, you can do that right?"

"I'm sure I'm at that level. I haven't had a lot to do these past... I'm... I'm going to fly again." She's almost crying.

Aura unlocked fungus seems to respond better to the person who unlocked it, something Pietro blabbed my ear off about. Waveform similarities and interactions.

I stop and walk infront of her, kneeling to her level.

"I can't give you back your legs. I can't give you back your future family. I'm not even sure I can give you back your wings. But I can sure as sunrise try."

She would jump up and give me a hug, but she is chair bound. "What do I have to do?"

"Well. The interface... It's a bit, claustrophobic."

"I can do it." She nods.

Being pinning down and trapped in a cargo airship with spikes of metal through you will give almost anyone a degree of claustrophobia.

"You'll also need to wear a skin tight, body conforming suit." It's a eva-dammed plugsuit.

Qrow cracks up.

"I... I can do that." Ashley is somehow less sure about that 'weird request' than her moderate claustrophobia, though she isn't climbing into it yet. "Um, I assume there's a perfectly valid scientific reason for this?"

"Of course."

"Did you design said suit?" Qrow teases.

I stand up. "Well, someone had to-" He cracks up again. "It's to remove potential interference and increase Aural connection integrit- oh just shut up."

Qrow isn't shutting up and Ashley has joined in.

Only for Qrow to make it worse. "She's in a chair, she'll need someone to help her. Let me guess, you volenteer for 'perfectly valid scientific reasons'?"

Ashley isn't really sore about being a wheelchair, which I've always found odd. Maybe she was just hiding it? I don't know.

Unfortunately, Qrow is also right. "I'm the only expert-"

"This whole thing is just to see me naked." And now Ashley is teasing me. "You could have just asked."

Oh god. No.

I take a deep breathe. "You know what? Create some new traditions for future generations, assuming this works. I am going to go and star- Oh will you two please shut up."

I strut off. "Children, all of you."

Okay, yeah, the plugsuit definitely looks like fetish wear in real life. I suppose it was in Evangelion, but I didn't really see it like that. I watched NGE too young to get the fetishwear aspect of it, and after that I didn't really change my preconceptions of it.

At least Ashley isn't a teenager.

The back door opens of the gutted and reworked Manta. Another thing I'm glad it won't do is steal Ashley's soul. It might have basis in my mycelial network and Pietro's Aura transfer devices for interactions in lieu of my Semblance, but there are hard limits, physical limits, on how much can be transferred at a time. Not just 'Aura fuses' that could be replaced, but the Aura connection system is hard designed from the ground up to be only able to reach a certain level of connectivity (or transfer) before it begins to burn out. Rather that, than the machine stealing peoples souls.

I did watch NGE, after all.

"Nervous?" I ask.

Ashley nods, now that the body sized tray is ejected from the dark hole inside the core of the ship. It will feel like being buried alive in a coffin at first. Has to, it's based on the coffin Amber was in.

Amber.

I couldn't have done this without her, not this fast. The mushrooms take around 4 to 6 weeks to grow, and I don't have that kind of time.

So, I got clever. A shipment of some of the body parts I have been hoarding since Vytal, some Black Science, and an application of my Semblance, and tada!

Uhg. Black Science. At least by Remnant standards. I wove some of Amber's neural tissue, from the lower spine, into a mycelial crop and used my Semblance to take control of the set. Took a few tries, but I got it.

It's not enough to heal people, Amber was brilliant enough to develop her own Paradigm Shift and turn a gardening Semblance into a healing one. She... really had a bad roll of the dice getting Maidenhood. A healer and kind soul, thrown into a war she didn't want to fight, and then killed for it.

I don't even think she had Magic when she Paradigm Shifted her Semblance, not by the stories I managed to find when I wasn't working on other things.

She wasn't just vegan because of her Semblance making it easy to have food, but also because she really didn't want to hurt anyone.

That lack of killing instinct is what got her killed by Cinder and her team, in the end. She could have won.

But she was fighting more than just them, but her own kind nature the entire time.

With a limited version of Amber's Semblance, I managed to quickly cultivate a decent Aura rich fungal strain. It burned out the neural tissue I had, and while I have more, it's a limited resource.

Still, the strain is being worked on by other people now, especially since Baker went hydrogen cell crazy.

"If it helps distract you, we will be having Lode flying to keep an eye on you, in case anything happens while your learning to fly." I smirk a little. "Importantly, he doesn't know who is going to be piloting this thing."

Ashley giggles a little, and forces herself to relax.

"I'm..."

She clenches her eyes closed. "Lets get this over with."

I help her up onto the tray. "Buttons are by your left hand for sliding it in and out, and closing the door. You can pull out at any time. There is an emergency eject lever that will pull you out hard and fast. If you are crashing, or if you are stressed out, just yank it and you'll be outside in a second, okay?"

She nods.

I lay her down into the tray.

Ashley is strong. Really strong.

It's been 2 hours since I loaded her into the tray, and she has been slowly sliding back in and out, confronting her claustrophobia.

Right now, she is inside. And has been for 9 minutes, the longest she's been in there yet.

Trauma doesn't just go away, but Ashley is fighting it hard.

I scan through the data I'm getting of her Aura and the ships. It might be boring for me, but she is fighting a battle in there. Sure, she's been getting therapy for it since the crash, I insisted to pay for it, but this is... well.

She starts talking.

But I knew that she was before she started.

Because the Aura readings are spiking.

"Through strength of will and horrors seen, I persist relentless towards dream.

Wings broken and sky acall, I accept and move past my fall.

Hope lost yet newly found, to one day rise from the ground.

Even broken bones may mend.

I Will Fly Again."

The ship's aura unlocks.

Synchronisation at: 20%

24%

29% Still rising.

Engine pods flicker as I watch with eyes and cameras and instruments as Ashley's soul spreads through the ship, touching her new body.

She gasps through her body, and the ship shakes a little.

"49% sync. Still rising." I call out.

The ship shakes. Wheels spin in random directions. The cable ties strain to hold the thrashing aircraft down.

This isn't anything like a pilot learning to fly.

A new body to cover the old. A new sense to expand and interact with the world. A new set of prosthetics, not replacing, but adding to the existing body and sense of self.

This isn't anything like a pilot learning to fly.

This is like a baby learning to walk.

"69% nice, and leveling off." I jumps again. "No wait, still-

"I can see." Ashley says in awe.

So she can. Feeds from external camera's are woven into the mycelium, which is now woven into her soul.

Now panic. "I can... I can... The world's magnetic field is... South is that way. The windspeed over my.. Oh gods. Too many. I can see everywhere! This is. Eject EJECT"

The emergency eject is hit.

The aircraft goes still as the tray bolts out the back.

Qrow and I are on her in a second, the coffin's, the 'plug's' door open and Ashley gasping for air.

"I'm sorry." I apologise. "That was my mistake. I didn't realise you would be overloaded with..."

I wasn't, when I was put in this body after nothing for most the time. I had my issues, but not sensory overload. Sure, this body isn't as detailed as a Remnin's, but it has entirely new senses in it.

Maybe I just... "I'm sorry."

Ashley drains the glass of water, still breathing heavily, before slamming it down on the desk. A crack grows up it from the base.

"Again."

Of course she's not giving up.

"Synchronization at 23%." I call out.

"Can you turn off some of the camera's or something?" Qrow asks beside me.

"No. I specifically designed that not to be possible, otherwise someone could remote in and control it. Probably should have, considering this is a test aircraft." I mutter. "32%!"

The aircraft shakes a little, and I see the data shifting.

This is the fifth time she has synced with it, each time getting overwhelmed and ejecting. Though, she is learning. Not just staying longer in high sync ratios each time, but taking longer to synchronise with the aircraft. Feeling it out.

Even now, she is highly synced with the positional system that tells her where she is, what pitch/yaw/roll is, but blind to almost everything else. One system at a time.

One by one, she tests them. Vision comes last, and she takes the longest with that.

"I'm going to attempt two at a time now." She's learning how to be an aircraft again.

"Understood."

3 weeks 0 days.

She has called off her job at the bakers for the week.

We have been testing for ages now. That's fine, I can do that.

"Synchronisation at 73%." The highest, and 70% is the lowest I'll allow before flight.

The sensors on the aircraft aren't highly detailed, but they are numerous to cover the entire field of perception. Losing 30% detail on one makes it much harder to see or feel whatever is there, so much so I would consider anything lower to be a distraction rather than a help.

So 70% even across the board is what I put as required for flight. Not that we are anywhere near flying at the moment, Ashley is having trouble holding 70% sync for more than 90 seconds.

"Weapons array at 55% Ashley." I call out her lowest.

"I feel it." She replies, over the communications system in the aircraft rather than her own body's mouth.

The weapons are unloaded, thankfully, otherwise she would have unloaded her entire missile pod during the first sensory overload into the ground. Still, they are needed. Grimm, always Grimm.

The numbers rise as she shifts focus. It's going to take a bit of practice to learn how to be the plane by default.

"Alright, that's enough for today." I call.

"I can keep going." She replies.

Qrow chuckles. "Yeah, but we have other things to do."

I shrug. "I mean, I could put things off, but it's not a good idea. The wonders of being your own boss, I guess."

"You have to make yourself do things." Qrow nods in sympathy.

Ashley sighs and ejects, before shivering. Right, thermals. I need to work on the plugsuit. "Couldn't put some insulation in this thing?"

"And take away the skimpy look? Alloy wouldn't do that."

"Shut up Qrow." I mutter, knowing it does nothing. "I'll have a look at it tonight then, seeing as you are probably going to be in the hotseat again tomorrow."

"Uh, no. I've got work." We lift her out and put her in her chair.

She frowns.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"It's..." Ashley lifts her hands infront of her and looks at them. "So... different."

We start walking, Qrow pushing from behind. Normally Ashley would push herself, but she's in a bit of mood right now. Introspective.

"Different how?" I ask, not just for scientific reasons.

"Like... I'm small again."

"Ah." I smile.

Small again, not big while in the plane.

Ashley continues. "And I can't see behind me, or feel the sun on my wings." She laughs. "This must sound silly."

"Not to me." I glare at Qrow who was going to make a comment. "You are becoming more. Expanding. Her sense of self is expanding to include the 'prosthetics'."

She looks at me, and recalls that I was once a Remnin named Yuki. I do a quick check and some calculations to see if anyone can hear or see us before tapping my head. "I've got a computer here. A scroll, and it's features, worked in."

A jump, with little boosts from my jets, before landing makes out my point of my legs. "Multiple vision modes which a Remnin doesn't have access to."

"I've got my sword." Qrow puts in.

"I don't think that's the same." Ashley says.

"It is." I back up Qrow, glad he's taking this seriously. "If to a simpler degree. Tools, they become part of us. Remember how you used to fly, did you ever reach the point where you weren't a pilot in a plane, but the plane itself?"

She nods. "Yes, but not like this."

"True, it's a lot deeper, but it's still the same thing. Just a lot more intense. The difference between pale red and deep crimson, the same colour but more."

"You... didn't realise, the first time, that I would be overwhelmed." She says, a hidden question in there.

"No. When I..." I tilt my head to not say anything. "I had a different problem, but the whole new expansion of who/what I was wasn't one. In truth, I think I prefer this."

"Only because you don't sleep, letting you work all the time." Qrow grumbles.

"Well. Okay, that is one thing. But I never liked sleep. Sure, I liked sleeping, I don't think there's anyone who doesn't, but I didn't like sleep. The waste of time, the fact the body got tired, that you had to sleep for certain lengths of time, or sleep in the wrong way and wake up sore. Food too, nice to eat, but getting hungry is just a pain."

A lot of things bothered me about being organic. A lot.

Almost everything actually.

"I didn't like living. The living part of it, anyway. So when I put on some new clothes, it didn't just fit. It felt-"

"Right." Ashley fills in. "Sorry, I know a few people who have been like that. Not the whole 'living' thing, but like they weren't comfortable in their own skin until they transitioned."

I nod. Remnant has a lot better trans community than Earth, or at least the Remnant I fell into. Makes sense, when body dysphoria attracts Grimm and you have advance medical tech from fighting said Grimm, it's a lot cheaper and there is good incentive to help people feel... like themselves.

"I guess I'm trans-human then." I sigh. "I am sorry about the sensory overload, it didn't even occur to me that might happen."

"Trans-human?" Ashley tries the word out in her mouth.

That is the strange thing though, that I've noticed.

People don't get aug'd by choice. Lose a limb and get a cybernetic replacement, but people don't go 'hey, I want really cool robot arms.'. Not cyberpunk enough for the setting, I would guess from a writing standpoint, but that kind of logic only goes so far.

Yes, there are a few who have, but it's much lower than I would expect.

Oh.

I'm talking about transhumanism to someone.

I've never done that before. I've never really opened up about that.

It's never been an option before, not really, and with my slavery to serving social norms and pretending to be normal...

Is... is that something me? It seems so obvious in hindsight, but...

'I know Penny isn't a machine. Because I am one.'

Yeah.

.

Funny, how I was trying to get an organic body, or none at all, before they surprised me with this one.

2 weeks. 4 days.

I throw the table over in a fit of rage. Well, not really.

"Do you have to do that?" Pietro asks, his face on a video screen.

I sigh. "Yes. It's why I have a wooden table in here, for tossing it when I come across some bullshit."

"What is it this time then?" He smiles.

"I've cracked FTL communications." I frown. "Not freeform, but quantum entangled mycelial meshes with Aura serving as the transmission line. The one-entangled-two boxes have 'shared' matter that allows the same Aura signature to be on both boxes, and changed, without actually observing the contents." I shake my head. "The 'soul' doesn't care about the body, so it doesn't 'look down' to break the entanglement."

"So? That's good, isn't it? Or is this about faster than light again?" He's almost teasing, our relationship has healed the past few weeks with me contacting and helping Penny.

She's...

I should never have left her. Idiot.

"It's good, I suppose. Useful. Project WARFRAME will be able to make use of it easily, as will our communication satellites when they go up. But..." I fade off.

"But?" He prompts.

I sigh.

"But. It was too easy."

It's something that has been bothering me for a while now.

"I'm making too much progress. Too fast. Too... easy. Science should be hard, especially this."

"You're not stupid, Alloy." Pietro explains. "Far from it."

"But that's not enough." I frown harder. "I was expecting tens of thousands of tests, massive amounts of raw data to sift through, patterns to be hidden inside numerous other, less useful, patterns. And yes, there is that, but not nearly enough."

Pietro sends me a file, an Aura waveform. "What do you see?"

"Up-A7 is a bit high, maybe stress from Left-D1. Left-N2 and Right-N2 are in sync, and that is aggravating Down-N2 to siphon off from Up-N2. There's a jitter at Time-132, which I think is a sensor err-"

"Do you see?" He interrupts me.

I wait. I look. I try to find what he is talking about.

"No, nothing particularly odd. Is this Subject 147-B?"

He sighs. "You are very intelligent, but short-sighted. Or, perhaps, hyper focused."

Pietro straightens himself up to convey his point. "It took me 43 minutes to get what you did in a few seconds."

"No, that's..." I look over the data again. "It's because it's going directly into my head. I'm seeing it as a 4+time dimensional waveform."

"Exactly."

Oh.

Oh!

I let out a slow breath in realisation. "I'm clever. Add onto that is my synthetic mind allowing me to import and modify data at computer speeds. Then add onto that my unique perspective and knowledge from Terra. and then add onto that my adaptability to shift my perspective to see things, in this case learning how to think in 4+1 dimensions. Add onto that I can network with the labs computers and use them far more effectively than someone with a keyboard. Add onto that your own work that I am building off."

He chuckles. "Any one of those would give an edge to whoever has it."

I sigh. "And I have a box full of knives." I wipe my face with my hand. "Oh, sleep and food and water, I have more time..."

I think I could go on. Cutting edge equipment from Atlas and 'unlimited' funding.

Pietro nods. "More than that, they don't add together, but multiply. For example, without sleep, you have more time to write analytical algorithms. I don't think there has ever been a moment when your computer farm hasn't been working on something, you don't just schedule tasks, you catch it the moment it is done."

He's right.

"But... Science is suppose to be hard." I whine. "And certainly not intuitive like I am feeling. Harder anyway."

"Aura is not very well understood." He counters. "We are only just starting to look at it with a scientific perspective, so there would be many things that seem easy, to begin with."

Trrueee...

"But... I've started identify Magic, for goodness sake!" The M-possibility field. The underlying patterns in reality that seem to create impossible effects.

"You are one of the few people with personal experience with Magic." He counters again. "Remember when you were telling me about how you created 'white fire'?"

"Ugh. Yes. Didn't make sense that I was getting more energy out from the loop than I was putting in. Magic doesn't... That's your point though, isn't it?"

He nods. "That you have a scientific mind, and then discovered Magic, not the other way around. More than that, Terra does not have Magic, or Aura, or anything of the like, but seems to have the same basic laws as Remnant."

I groan as I see his latest point. "So I can easily see the difference. Conservation of Energy and Matter is a concept you lot seem to have not even thought of, with Dust affecting your perception of reality."

I mean, how could they when all someone needs to do to disprove it is hold up a vial of earth Dust and set it off, creating rocks they can't hold up nearly as easily as the vial? Or how ice Dust is capable of cooling things so fast, that Earth's math would tell me that it has a negative kelvin temperature.

Still not sure there is a negative kelvin on Remnant. "Bloody Magic."

Pietro laughs as I swear again, again and again, at Magic. I swear a lot at Magic, it's why I have a wooden table with 'stuff' on it to flip over.

"It still bothers me though." I comment.

"It's a strange problem you have." Pietro mocks.

"I mean, at the level I'm at now, I'm at comic book 'genius' levels of effectiveness, which is dumb. Then again... Watts, yourself, Ruby, Remnant seems to have a noticeably higher degree of experts and prodigies than Terra." Maybe because it's needed.

Grimm. Always Grimm. The world always at war, always pushing people to be better...

"I know that look." Pietro comments.

"Aura... Sense of self." I turn and pull up a physical screen so Pietro can see what I'm looking at.

The display shows a graph, a simple graph. 'uniqueness' versus 'effectiveness'. I mapped it out to see if there was a relation between how 'special' a Huntsman or Huntress is compared to their combat effectiveness, looking for a reason for the story reason of why characters that stick out are more likely to be important characters.

But...

"You are guessing that Aura pushes people to be better." Pietro follows.

"It makes sense, doesn't it? That just as, say Weiss has a scar over her eye because she accepts that as part of herself, that the same self reinforcement effect might apply mentally too."

Pietro's keyboard clicks as he starts looking at his own data and sources over in Atlas. "That... if you want to be better, faster, stronger, or in this case cleverer, then your Aura will help make that real. Or perhaps, self confidence, if you believe it, it makes it so, to a limited degree."

"Communication." I realise. "That has been bothering me for a while now, how people can understand eachother clearly. I thought it was just an echo effect from the difference between fiction and reality, or my own brain being replaced, but-"

"If you want someone else to understand you, and want to understand someone, then the same Aura correcting effect will boost the ability to speak and listen." This is one of the reasons I like Pietro. He can keep up. "Not just for people with unlocked Auras, everyone has Aura."

"Except Grimm." I add.

Oh shit. "That's why they target people with Unlocked Auras first. Why a Huntress shouting for attention will draw them away from a lesser target. People who want to communicate, by evolutionary instinct or social need or just loneliness, will be passively using some Aura to broadcasting their desire to communication."

"The same mechanism that allows people to communicate easier is making it easier for Grimm to find them." Pietro simplifies.

There are too many stories of a civilian under attack from Grimm, with say, a Beowolf right above them, ready to swing it's paw and kill them, only to stop when a Huntress yells at them to and change target. Never mind that it would be more effective to kill them and move on, they stop.

They get blinded. The Huntress wants to communicate with them.

And, inversely, when a Huntsman wants to hide, they can sneak around Grimm. Because they are actively suppressing their own desire to communicate, plus whatever Aura effect that tilts the odds towards helping them hide.

This is the effect I leveraged during the Siege of Vale. Spikes of Grimm drawn out by powerful souls that wanted to be seen and heard, that wanted to draw a part of the Grimm forwards.

I calm myself down, the kick I get from solving another puzzle being put on hold. "It's a hypothesis. We need to test it."

"Still wondering why you are making so much progress?" He asks.

"No. I like solving puzzles. Maybe the scraps of Aura I have are reinforcing that, making me better." I smirk. "Though, it is just one more edge in my box of knives."

I bet I can sharpen it.

Author's Notes:

The police are here.

Which, I guess is expected, seeing as I told my mum during my visit up what I was going to do, even if I didn't say when.

I didn't manage to get to write while I was up there, sorry.

Anyway, story goes like this:

Attack before the trial, by about 1 week, by the Red Fang. They hit the whoosh manufactering plants, which get major damage. This is to scare off the trial from Menagerie because 'we don't want the humans on faunus land' or whatever. Mostly, it's Adam being manipulated by Salem to stir up shit, as she knows that the trial will have to take place anyway. It's basically the menagerie equivilent of the breach.

Trial goes off fine, Jacques is convicted, and there's a nice scene I had planned where Weiss would visit him and he would congratulate her. Pissed, obviously, at being thrown out of the SDC, and the SDC getting gutted, but he sees it as a masterful and underhanded business play by Weiss to forcibly and quickly take control of the SDC.

'You really are my daughter.'

Then she goes up on stage during her accpetance speech, and shuts him up by fully dissolving the SDC as her first act.

This, out of everything, gives Adam pause, but it's too late. The Red Fang want Jacques dead, not imprisoned, and there's too much momentum for him to be able to stop it, if he could.

The post trial party is hit. Bad.

Not collapse of Menagerie bad, but enough to sour relations with the rest of the world a bit.

So much for a 5th kingdom.

All of this though, is a distraction.

Salem has had a newly reinducted Cinder and Watts hit Atlas while James is in Menagerie as a show of good faith during the trial, and it's attack.

They don't get the relic, but Cinder does get the Winder Maiden's power, sorry Fria. Importantly, she uses her new tech arm with Pietro Aura Transfer tech to do it, which may or may not result in parts of Fria's mind crossing over into Cinder, depending on how I wanted to play that story.

Not that that aspect would come up again with how quickly I'm ending it.

Atlas pulls out of Menagerie after the attack, Alloy with them. Sienna and the Blake's parents say they can rebuild, but it will take a while and trust between Menagerie and the rest of the world is low. False flag attacks and the like.

So everyone heads back to Atlas to guard the staff, now that Cinder has the Key to the vault.

The timeline here splits, either they arrive in time to stop her, and the story goes on longer, or (what I was aiming for with my upcoming Deadline) they arrive almost too late.

Sure, they shack up and stay for a week, a reunited Team RWBY and Alloy catch up with everyone. Alloy would spend some time with character development with JNPR here, if I could write it. And Penny, but I find writing Penny kinda hard.

Anyway, after a week, Cinder attacks.

In classic Canon!RWBY fashion, JNPR is outside of the main story events, stuck in Mantle with Alloy as RWBY, then the Ace Ops, then Penny and Winter get steamrolled one after the other by a Double Maiden Cinder and her team.

She gets the relic.

Worse, she knows the password, thanks to Lady Tarot teasing it out with clever questions and comments while talking to Qrow, who was chasing down the hacker who breached the data security by following less... noble means.

Cinder, knowing what she has and how to use it, as well as the 'one thing at a time rule', uses the relic to create a quick escape airship to Salem.

But mostly to drop a city on Alloy, who she is thoroughly scared of. Between numbers, Alloy's other gaslighting, her predictions coming true (To a degree), Alloy coming back from the dead, Menageries rapid rise from backwater nowhere to rising Dustless 5th kingdom, and now seeing how the Ace Ops and Winter and Team RWBY have taken their Semblances and Aura manipulation Paradigm Shifts to entirely new levels. If they all hit her at once, which they didn't, they would have beaten her and her team, double Maiden or no.

Well, it's all unnatural.

Salem promised to change the world. (Rather than tell everyone she is actually going to kill everyone, though that is a kind of change.)

Salem promised to change the world. She has had literal millennia to do it.

Alloy is doing it, and in half a year she is already fundamentally changed the status quo.

And Cinder believes she is the only one who sees the threat. Salem has dismissed her claims, (seemingly, she is at most curious at that point), all of Ozma's group is 'infected' or subverted by whatever unnatural Outsiderness she is using. An entire kingdom (menagerie) is under her sway, as well as Atlas through James Ironwood.

Ah, Cinder was to be an anti-villain. Doing terrible things to save the world from a nameless monster from outside of reality that follows rules beyond knowing. Though, it's purely selfish, if she wins, she'll rule the world and be the most powerful being in it.

Never to be hurt again by anyone or anything. Even Salem.

The Alicorn is a greater threat in her mind than Salem and Ozma.

Which, is exactly what Alloy planned, though she wasn't suppose to push this hard and shove her back into Salem's grasp. If the story was slower, then Cinder would have remained separate and built her own faction. So would have Jax, actually, who would learn about Alloy, or part of her, and the Shadow War from interrogating a mind controlled member of Ozma's circle. But he got dealt with off-screen for the sake of time.

Anyway, Atlas falls.

And Alloy... She has a miracle.

I've been seeding throughout the story various technologies for this one, thought the latter chapters have been rushed and made her discover them faster (Which is why there was a whole 'I'm doing science too hard' thing this chapter, thought it does, to a degree, make sense.)

So, Alloy would pull on Order again, analyse the situation and her assests, and come up with something to save Mantle/Atlas.

Atlas is falling, but slower than Canon, both due to warning and James hoarding gravity Dust hard, and the limited amount of non-magical superconductors that have been slowly replacing the Staff generated ones.

But it is falling. And the gravity Dust can't last.

Alloy would ask James for permission. Then, she and JNPR would head to the closest and largest ground power relay station for the lower city's Dust network grid.

From there, power would be cut down to barely active levels. Heat would turn off, major systems would shut down, basically everything would be on idle. Powered, connected, but not running.

James would then broadcast over the emergency system a set of instructions. For people to put their hands either in their power sockets, or on someone who is.

Because Dust is Aura conductive. And Alloy has a Semblance, the skills, and the expertise on how to spread her Aura out through the network. With some help from Jaune.

From there, she would unlock someone's Aura, with Ren's help. And then another. And another. Each person costs a certain amount of Aura to unlock, but they on average give more back, added to a growing soul network running off the Dust power grid.

A growing battery of Aura that Alloy can network into and through Jaune, and into Pyrrha and Nora. Nora would create lighting (that is plasma) and Pyrrha would control it, working together to create a plasma screen force field projected up and onto the underside of the city. Ren would stabilise and manage the flow, as well as project a slight calming state with his own Semblance to help concentration.

The interconnected grid of souls would spread as more and more people would join the network, and some would develop their own Semblances to aid in the push. Then the network goes up the cables and joins the people in Atlas.

The whole of Atlas-Mantle sings together in the Soulscape. 2 million voices, 2 million souls, working together in harmony to save not just themselves, but eachother.

I was thinking a lyric variant of 'We all lift' from Warframe.

The plasma screen would have originally been pink (Nora) and black (Pyrrha) but with so many working together it would have looked like a rainbow of colours by the end. All united to slow Atlas' fall, and direct it, enough to park it safely.

But, Alloy would be dead. The weakest link, and her Semblance being the focal point to network everyone together.

Not dead as in 'soul in the after life' dead, but more 'torn apart into 2 million fragments' dead.

Salem believes Cinder now. Such an act is Relic level, and unlike Ruby's Silver eyes, completely unknown.

From here, the story changes slightly. Alloy is still semi alive, just broken into 2 million pieces and scattered across 2 million souls.

People stop having nightmares, an Alicorn in black with a mane of white always there to save them.

Cinder shits herself.

'I snuck in through a dream and a corpse, through a tiny crack in reality.'

There are a lot of people dreaming about Alloy now.

More than that, people begin knowing things. The news of Salem's existence leaks from shattered memories, everything that Alloy did (while in Remnant) bleeding through. There's panic, outrage, and hope.

Importantly, though, is that her Semblance is still active, to a degree. People connected have a kind of strange heightened empathy, a connection, to other people who are connected.

And it spreads. Like a virus on touch.

The collective unconscious forms.

Alloy gently nudging people to help one another. A child starving in the cold will be found. A woman beaten by her husband behind closed doors will gain the courage to speak out.

And some people will have surges in power, their Aura supercharged, in rare moments.

Alloy might be dead, her kindness (and hints of cruelty) spread, but she is still helping.

Not enough to change much, but enough to tip the scales slightly. To make the world just a little kinder, more empathic.

The power of friendship becomes real.

Close friendships, such as Team RWBY and JNPR, eventually progress to the point they can talk telepathically, and even use eachothers Semblances.

All of that takes years though.

40 years later, Alloy is suddenly pulled back together. Connected still, but of one mind.

Salem is dead, properly, and the Brothers have returned.

And they are interested in the shattered yet still entangled bits of soul that seems to be in 90% of the population.

Alloy isn't happy.

They have decided to sweep the board clear again. Either because they are just that apathetic, or because humanity has failed the task.

I like the second option better.

Alloy tries to argue with them, to point out how humanity, as beings made by them with both light and dark, are fundamentally incapable of being pure light or dark. That to do so would tear every single person apart.

They don't care. That's the game. For humanity to choose light OR dark, to refuse one part of their nature so completely as to totally dedicate themselves to one brother.

So she dissects them.

Reality is complicated. Too complicated. Far too complicated for them to be the real creators of Humanity. Sure, they did recreate them after the Shattering, but they did not come first.

They really don't like that.

I was thinking of having volume 9 stuff in this at this point, that humanity (or a bunch of wizards trying to make an afterlife) created the EverAfter and the Tree, only to lose their sense of self like Alloy did and forget. But, I'm not so sure. Volume 9 has time travel, and working that cosmology into the story this late would serve only as a distraction, and a demonstration of how clever Alloy is as she rapidly has to adjust her world-view to compensate for the fundamental change. Would be a good final second final crisis though, as she tries to take in the new information and come up with a debate or defence to protect humanity and convince the brothers before they wipe the slate clean. Get clever in a time limit.

Anyway, they don't care.

So she does the only thing left.

She attacks them.

Not with power, but by being clever.

They are in a soulscape. Alloy is still connected to almost all of Remnant's population. And she still has her Semblance.

So she links them into the network. She forces them to feel everything they have done. Every hint of suffering. Every lost life taken too early. Every father staring dead at the headstone of his son. Every scream of rage against an unjust system.

And Grimm. Always Grimm.

Tearing. Feeding. Killing. Relentless and without compassion.

Alloy gives them 'Terrible Empathy'.

And the Brothers are forced to face their sins.

Forced to see people not as toys, not a things they have created and can be discarded at a whim.

Then she leverages her connection to the afterlife, the fact that she is dead, that parts of her soul were with people who died over the 40 years, and that the Brothers both have a connection to the afterlife and the souls there.

Alloy gives them 'Terrible Empathy'.

Everyone who has ever lived, suffered, and died due to the Brother's actions and inactions turn on their tormentors.

The collective will of all of Humanity, present and past, strike.

Now, the Brothers are powerful. Maybe 'all powerful'. But they aren't clever. And they aren't empathic.

They are like children, playing with toys, too young or stupid or evil to care that the 'toys' are people.

The toys are angry.

The Brothers are powerful, but they are fragile, especially to this kind of attack.

They try to disconnect. They fail.

They are torn apart.

Epilogue:

Alloy is fading back into millions of fragments, held together by her failing sense of self now that the Brother's power isn't holding her, though she has grabbed onto what magic she can to help. It's failing, slowly, but she has enough time to appear as a vision to everyone.

To say goodbye.

Oh, and to taunt a still alive Cinder, if she is still alive. 'I just killed the Brothers. What have you been doing?'

All of the team is still alive, I think. They Paradigm Shifted Aura's healing factor and 'sense of self' affirment to slow down their ageing, though a lot are retired from active duty.

Ozma is still Ozpin, and Alloy leverages the god corpses to cure him of immortality. As well as wind back the clock on his body. One last lifetime, after the end.

I'd write a character by character blurb each here, but 40 years is a long time to time skip, and I don't really have the energy or time to do an analysis of where everyone ended up. Beyond beating Salem, that is.

Time running out, Alloy decides to cut things short, and pulls on the last of her god-corpse powers to do something. Maybe resurrect Summer or something, or maybe kill all the Grimm (though there's a good chance that the group are already near that with Silverlight Satellite weapons arrays being made, a hint at an alternate ending via the technological victory path I thought about writing.). Whatever it would be, it would be nice.

Nice.

.

Well.

...

That it I guess.

.

Thanks for reading, sorry I couldn't keep going.

.

Maybe Mum will win and I'll be forced to live in this hellhole of a reality longer. I might even come back and rewrite this.

But I don't want to.

I'm done.

I've spent everything and only broke myself trying to...

I should stop now. Story's over.

.

Maybe I'll wake up in Remnant. Ha.

.

No, there's nothing there. I checked. Studied it as hard as my broken mind could.

There's nothing. Non-existence. No such thing as a soul.

.

I prefer it that way. My own mind has been poisoned against me. My empathy is faked, my social relationships work to be done, my family obligations. I've been trying to fight against this for over a decade, ever since my first suicide attempt.

Therapy. Hobbies. Clubs. Medication. Counciling. Frequent family contact. Writing.

I wonder what I could have been, if people loved me when I was growing up. If I never learned to hate and kill my soul as a child.

I could have been beautiful.